Александра Фуллер4.0 In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time.
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A classic is born in this tender, intensely moving and even delightful journey through a white African girl's childhood. Born in England and now living in Wyoming, Fuller was conceived and bred on African soil during the Rhodesian civil war (1971-1979), a world where children over five "learn[ed] how to load an FN rifle magazine, strip and clean all the guns in the house, and ultimately, shoot-to-kill." With a unique and subtle sensitivity to racial issues, Fuller describes her parents' racism and the wartime relationships between blacks and whites through a child's watchful eyes. Curfews and war, mosquitoes, land mines, ambushes and "an abundance of leopards" are the stuff of this childhood. "Dad has to go out into the bush... and find terrorists and fight them"; Mum saves the family from an Egyptian spitting cobra; they both fight "to keep one country in Africa white-run." The "A" schools ("with the best teachers and facilities") are for white children; "B" schools serve "children who are neither black nor white"; and "C" schools are for black children. Fuller's world is marked by sudden, drastic changes: the farm is taken away for "land redistribution"; one term at school, five white students are "left in the boarding house... among two hundred African students"; three of her four siblings die in infancy; the family constantly sets up house in hostile, desolate environments as they move from Rhodesia to Zambia to Malawi and back to Zambia. But Fuller's remarkable affection for her parents (who are racists) and her homeland (brutal under white and black rule) shines through. This affection, in spite of its subjects' prominent flaws, reveals their humanity and allows the reader direct entry into her world. Fuller's book has the promise of being widely read and remaining of interest for years to come. Photos not seen by PW. (On-sale Dec. 18)Forecast: Like Anne Frank's diary, this work captures the tone of a very young person caught up in her own small world as she witnesses a far larger historical event. It will appeal to those looking for a good story as well as anyone seeking firsthand reportage of white southern Africa. The quirky title and jacket will propel curious shoppers to pick it up.
Anna Burns0.0 This is a book about feelings, family, sex, and Ireland—but don't tell Amelia that. She's the one growing up in the mad family, in the mad society, who doesn't want to know what's going on. But things are going on: eight-year-olds collecting very peculiar treasure; babies who might be, or might not be, bombs; schoolgirls bringing guns into schoolyards; and, of course, lots of food and bad, bad sex.
If Amelia is to live she needs to change. Can she, though, in a place where people don't know how to look after themselves, and so wouldn't know how to look after one another?
Донна Моррисси0.0 Kit's Law is the passionate, well-told story of three feisty female characters struggling against imposed order and male tradition in a harsh Newfoundland outport. Lizzy is the steadfast grandmother; crazy, red-haired Josie, the mother; and Kit, the 14-year-old daughter who tells their story. Like a maritime cutter, the narrative sails along smoothly, and much of the dialogue is in the distinctive argot of that windy Atlantic island: "When it's clear like ice and ribbed on the bottom--that's the killin' frost. Your berries are dead. Good for moose and caribou pickin's. Now, there's them that picks 'em anyway, and that's why their jam is as tart as a whore's arse."
With its partridgeberry patches, moose stew, and endless cups of tea, this is quintessential Newfoundland. After Lizzy dies, the nasty local pastor wants to put Kit in an orphanage and Josie in an appropriate institution. The compassionate Doctor Hodgins becomes their staunch defender against both do-gooders and those plotting Kit's downfall. This first novel is a female coming-of-age story of the rural variety, replete with endemic poverty, good-hearted and downright evil village people, and the constant irritant of Newfoundland's raw, nasty weather. It is also the touching story of Kit's first love, and it reads like a breeze. --Mark Frutkin
Andrew O'Hagan0.0
Hugh Bawn was a modern hero, a dreamer, a Socialist, a man of the people who revolutionized Scotland's residential development after World War II. Now he lies dying on the eighteenth floor of one of the flats he built, flats that are being demolished along with the idealism he inherited from his mother. Hugh's final months are plagued by memory and loss, by bitter feelings about his family and the country that could not live up to the housing constructed for it. His grandson, Jamie, comes home to watch over his dying mentor and sees in the man and in the land that bred him his own fears. He tells the story of his family-a tale of pride and delusion, of nationality and strong drink, of Catholic faith and the end of the old Left. It is a tale of dark hearts and modern houses, of three men in search of Utopia. Andrew O'Hagan's story is a poignant and powerful reclamation of the past and a clear-sighted look at our relationship with personal and public history. Our Fathers announces the arrival of a major writer.
Giles Foden0.0 Shortly after his arrival in Uganda, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan is called to the scene of a bizarre accident: Idi Amin, careening down a dirt road in his red Maserati, has run over a cow. When Garrigan tends to Amin, the dictator, in his obsession for all things Scottish, appoints him as his personal physician. And so begins a fateful dalliance with the central African leader whose Emperor Jones-style autocracy would transform into a reign of terror.
In The Last King of Scotland Foden's Amin is as ridiculous as he is abhorrent: a grown man who must be burped like an infant, a self-proclaimed cannibalist who, at the end of his 8 years in power, would be responsible for 300,000 deaths. And as Garrigan awakens to his patient's baroque barbarism--and his own complicity in it--we enter a venturesome meditation on conscience, charisma, and the slow corruption of the human heart. Brilliantly written, comic and profound, The Last King of Scotland announces a major new talent.
Eden Robinson0.0 The menacing underside of family life is the subject of Eden Robinson's debut collection. In crackling prose, she describes homes ruled by bullies, psychopaths, and delinquents; families whose conflict resolution techniques range from grand theft to homicide; kids who have nowhere to go and a lifetime to get there.
Рохинтон Мистри4.6 …Индия 1975 года – в период чрезвычайного положения, введенного Индирой Ганди. Индия – раздираемая межкастовыми, межрелигиозными и межнациональными распрями, пестрая, точно лоскутное покрывало, которое шьет из обрезков ткани молодая вдова Дина Далал, приютившая в своем доме студента и двух бедных портных из касты неприкасаемых. Снаружи гремят политические бури, вспыхивают волнения и беспорядки, но в их крошечном доме царят мир и согласие. Они дарят друг другу любовь и поддержку, помогая удерживать хрупкое равновесие на грани отчаяния и надежды…
Пол Уоткинс0.0 Archangel is classic storytelling on a cutting-edge theme--environmental terrorism. In the remote forests of Maine, a powerful businessman is clearing forests as quickly as he can, logging thousands of trees before they can be protected by preservation laws. A young environmental radical is determined to stop him with the help of an idealistic reporter.
Jim Crace0.0 November, 1836. A fierce gale beaches an American sail ship off the English coast, injuring an African slave below decks and eventually disgorging 300 head of cattle and rowdy American sailors into a hardscrabble fishing village. The same storm drives into port a steamer, bearing one Aymer Smith, the well-intentioned but foolish prig who will deprive the town of its livelihood, free the African slave, and set into motion a whole series of unforeseeable, tragicomic events.
One of the most seductive and surprising novelists at work today, Jim Crace once again creates a richly strange and believable world; one uncannily familiar to our own.
Карл Макдугалл0.0 When Andy Paterson gets out of jail, he finds Glasgow different from the place he left two years before. But before he himself can change, he must deal with the past, with why he went to jail and what happened while he was in there.
Adam Thorpe4.5 At the heart of this novel lies the fictional village of Ulverton. It is the fixed point in a book that spans three hundred years. Different voices tell the story of Ulverton: one of Cromwell's soldiers staggers home to find his wife remarried and promptly disappears, an eighteenth century farmer carries on an affair with a maid under his wife's nose, a mother writes letters to her imprisoned son, a 1980s real estate company discover a soldier's skeleton, dated to the time of Cromell... Told through diaries, sermons, letters, drunken pub conversations and film scripts this is a masterful novel that reconstructs the unrecorded history of England. 'Sometimes you forget that it is a novel, and believe for a moment that you are really hearing the voice of the dead' Hilary Mantel
Элспет Баркер5.0 This first novel explores the chain of events which, in the social circumstances and mores of Scotland of the forties and fifties, cause the bizarre death of a young girl. This novel won the RSL's Winifred Holtby Prize for the best regional novel of the year.
Nino Ricci0.0 When young Vittorio Innocente’s mother, Cristina, is bitten by a snake in the family stable, no one sees the blue-eyed stranger leaving except for Vittorio. He struggles to keep his mother’s secret but secrets in a small village are hard to keep, and while Cristina’s belly gradually grows under her loose dresses, they find themselves shunned by their superstitious neighbours. A classic of Canadian literature, Lives of the Saints has earned many distinctions since it was originally published in 1990. It was a national bestseller for seventy-five weeks, received the Governor Generals Literary Award for Fiction, the W.H. Smith / Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the F.G. Bressani Prize. In England it won the Betty Trask Award and Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, in the U.S. was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and in France was an Oeil de la letter Selection of the National Libraries Association. It was also adapted into a miniseries starring Sophia Loren.
Hilary Mantel3.8 One dark and stormy night in 1956, a stranger named Fludd mysteriously turns up in the dismal village of Fetherhoughton. He is the curate sent by the bishop to assist Father Angwin-or is he?
In the most unlikely of places, a superstitious town that understands little of romance or sentimentality, where bad blood between neighbors is ancient and impenetrable, miracles begin to bloom. No matter how copiously Father Angwin drinks while he confesses his broken faith, the level of the bottle does not drop.
Although Fludd does not appear to be eating, the food on his plate disappears. Fludd becomes lover, gravedigger, and savior, transforming his dull office into a golden regency of decision, unashamed sensation, and unprecedented action.
Knitting together the miraculous and the mundane, the dreadful and the ludicrous, Fludd is a tale of alchemy and transformation told with astonishing art, insight, humor, and wit.
Шуша Гуппи0.0 Decades before the Iranian revolution of 1979, which placed the country under a repressive religious rule, Shusha Guppy grew up in a Persia delicately balanced between traditional Islamic life and the transforming forces of westernization. In this eloquent memoir, Guppy recreates the lost world of her childhood before the oil boom and the eventual overthrow of the Shah. Her lively tales about relatives, friends, music, drama, religious holidays, and celebrations bring to life a vanished society caught between the oppressive but stable strictures of the past and the unsettling freedoms of the future.
Мэгги Хемингуэй0.0 In the summer of 1887 a chance meeting between the painter Philip Wilson Steer and a young woman leads to an intense, forbidden love. As the days grow shorter so family ties and Victorian proprieties close in, bringing a tragic conclusion.
Балрадж Кханна0.0 The age-old conflicts between father and son are played out in this humorous and gently satirical novel set in postpartition India. Omi is just one of the boys in Camp Baldev Nagar expected to pass his exams, agree to an arranged marriage, and generally improve his station in life. However, he comes to resent the traditional life laid out for him by his hot-blooded, sweet-vending, social-climbing father. Creating a great deal of ill will as he challenges his father's authority, Omi strives to establish his independence and chart his own life. Along the way he surprises everybody, including himself.
Грэм Свифт3.7 "Земля воды" — самое известное произведение Грэма Свифта, которое в 1992 году экранизировал Стивен Джилленхол, один из режиссеров культового сериала "Твин Пикс".
В романе букеровского лауреата речь пойдет о судьбе человека – простого учителя, который хочет оставить память о себе в сердцах своих подопечных. Человеческий век короток, а от прошлого не скрыться за стенами школы, и Том Крик прекрасно понимает это. Перед ним стоит сложная задача: честно рассказать о собственной жизни, полной страха и сомнений. Вот только найдутся ли люди, готовые его слушать?
Кадзуо Исигуро3.7 Впервые на русском - дебютный роман знаменитого выпускника литературного семинара Малькольма Брэдбери, урожденного японца, лауреата Букеровской премии за "Остаток дня". Первая книга Исигуро уже подобна дзен-буддистскому саду, в котором ни цветистым метафорам, ни диким сорнякам не позволено заслонить сюжет.
Эцуко живет в английской провинции. После самоубийства старшей дочери они погружается в воспоминания о своей юности в послевоенном Нагасаки, дружбе с обедневшей аристократкой Сати-ко и о сопутствовавших этой дружбе странных, если не сказать макабрических, событиях...
Алан Джадд0.0 By the author of "Short of Glory", this novel deals with a battalion's four-month tour of duty in Armagh and Belfast during the early 1970s. The central character is Charles Thoroughgood, who with his men, has to cope with boredom as well as occasional outbreaks of horror.
Эльза Жубер0.0 Elsa Joubert se strak joernalistieke beskrywing van die lewe van die swartvrou Poppie Nongena is 'n aangrypend menslike portret en tegelyk ook 'n belangrike stuk hedendaagse geskiedskrywing. Van die boek is gese dat die Afrikaner hierna nooit weer sal kan se: Maar ons het nie geweet nie!
Ричард Херли0.0 Stone Age England. The ancient, nomadic way of life is coming to an end; the agricultural revolution has begun. When the farmers of Burh attack the sleeping nomad tribe, Tagart is the only survivor. Twenty-five and heir to the chief, his sole inheritance now is his tribal honour – and it demands revenge. His ally is the forest itself: that, and his own ingenuity, courage and hunting skill.
Anita Desai0.0 A classic from one of India's greatest writers with a stunning new cover in water colour.
Gone are the days when Nanda Kaul watched over her family and played the part of Vice-Chancellor's wife. Leaving her children behind in the real world, the busier world, she has chosen to spend her last years alone in the mountains in Kasauli, in a secluded bungalow called Carignano.
Until one summer her great-granddaughter Raka is dispatched to Kasauli and everything changes. Nanda is at first dismayed at this break in her preciously acquired solitude. Fiercely taciturn, Raka is, like her, quite untamed. The girl prefers the company of apricot trees and animals to her great-grandmother's, and spends her afternoons rambling over the mountainside. But the two are more alike than they know. Throughout the hot, long summer, Nanda's old, hidden dependencies and wounds come to the surface, ending, inevitably, in tragedy.
Marvellous yet restrained, Fire on the Mountain speaks of the past and its unshakable hold over the present.
Юджин Маккейб0.0 (Victims is a story as topical as today's headlines - the gripping account of a ruthlessly planned hostage - seizing operation by IRA agents. The victims, an Anglo-Irish family and the friends who happen to be spending the evening with them, are cultured and complex people who have regarded themselves as above the battle. Now, suddenly, they are dangerously involved; and, as an ironic twist to the situation, there is some common ground, they find, between them and some of their captors. But at least these dedicated terrorists - or some of them - appear to be open to reasoning and hard bargaining. Everyone who feels concerned about the situation in Ulster will find Victims compelling and appalling. Here is, in truth, an 'inside story', conveying with deep insight and terrible force the passions that are dividing the country. Eugene McCabe, who lives in County Monaghan, is well known as a play-wright in Ireland. He has twice won the Dublin Festival Prize and has written a number of TV plays for transmission north and south of the border. This is his first novel, and in dramatised form it has been televised by Radio Telefis Eireann.
Jane Gardam0.0 In this loosely connected sequence of short stories, Jane Gardam offers dazzling vignettes of human foibles in the smilingly fierce holiday island of Jamaica.
